We’ve switched from being pilgrims to being tourists during this post-sabbatical time on the East Coast…or so we thought. Our first day in the Big Apple took us across the harbor to the foot of Lady Liberty.
The poem by Emma Lazarus, donated by her in 1883 to the campaign to raise funds for Liberty’s pedestal, came to prominence only after her death when it was placed on the completed pedestal in 1903. She entitled it THE NEW COLOSSUS, and having seen the place in Rome where the ORIGINAL COLOSSUS erected by Nero once stood, we now had another layer of meaning to add to the content of what she wrote.
As we boat neared Liberty Island, words which I’d put to memory in my elementary school choir came to the surface once more:
That poem, which has never failed to move me, took on even greater meaning when, after bidding Liberty adieu, we docked at Ellis Island.
There we stood in the very room where my grandparents Ingvald and Anna Kindem had stood with their three young children Olaf, Halvor and Andi, on June 5, 1923 as immigrants from Norway. In the computerized files, we were able to find their names on the ship’s manifest and even glimpse a photo of the ship itself–The Stavangerfjord–which bore them safely to this new land. Yes, pilgrimage territory indeed!
From Ellis Island, we journeyed on to the 911 Memorial.
The Memorial is a powerful and elegant tribute to those whose lives were taken from them that awful day, and a tribute to the enduring principles to which we aspire as citizens of this republic. Standing at the edge of those two great pools whose waters continually cascade downward and ever more deeply toward the center of the earth, I found myself turning inward, remembering that awful day. The powerful nature of the time we had there was made more powerful still by my encounter with a young man named Harry. Harry asked if I’d mind snapping his photo next to one particular name that was engraved on the bronze apron that surrounded the North Pool. Happy to comply, I asked Harry to tell me about his friend, and I learned that the engraved name belonged to a young man he’d grown up with; who he’d gone to elementary school and karate classes with; a friend with whom he’d shared his childhood; a friend whose name was Aaron. Aaron Horwitz.
Harry and Aaron grew up in Manhattan. They were both there the day the towers came down; one on the inside, the other watching safely from his parent’s apartment nearby. “You know,” Harry told me, looking out on the Memorial grounds, “they got it right.”
That was our sentiment, too. Later we went through the newly opened 911 Museum. It’s cavernous spaces dwarfed us, but the exhibits carefully invited us in, offering an opportunity to go more deeply into the lives and stories of 911’s victims and those who rallied to save them. If you ever have the chance, I would recommend it.